Petition Make it a specific criminal offence to leave a child under 4 years old alone

It’s an offence to leave a child alone if it places them at risk, but it is not a specific offence to leave children of particular ages on their own.

More details

The NSPCC recommends infants and young children aged 0-3 years old should never be left alone. We believe doing so should be a criminal offence.

According to the NSPCC “[i]nfants and young children aged 0-3 years old should never be left alone even for 15 minutes while you pop down the road. This applies to not just to leaving them home alone but also in your car while you run into the shops” (NSPCC, 2022), yet unless this is treated as neglect or putting the child is at risk it is not a prosecutable act. Therefore, the law is not in line with guidance and the legislation should be amended.

This petition is closed This petition ran for 6 months

160 signatures

Progress of the petition towards its next target: 160 of 10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Show on a map the geographical breakdown of signatures by constituency

10,000 signatures required to get a government response

Date closed 27 July 2022
Get petition data (json format)

About petition data

The data shows the number of people who have signed the petition by country as well as in the constituency of each Member of Parliament. This data is available for all petitions on the site. It is not a list of people who have signed the petition. The only name that is shared on the site is that of the petition creator.